When I first met my clients in the Courage Driven Latina program, many of them said that they joined because they just needed the courage to start. They told me that once they started, they knew they could achieve their goals. And while that’s true, the courage to start is not always sustainable. You also need the courage to keep going no matter what. 

And I mean it – no matter what. It’s easy to stay motivated when things are going your way. But your dreams become a reality once you face adversity head-on and get through it. It’s tough, especially when you’re doing it all on your own. This is why I’m going to teach you how to have the courage to push through adversity. 

This week’s episode is very close to my heart because it is halfway through the year and I don’t want anyone giving up on their New Year’s goals. Here on the podcast, we are sharing a sneak peek into a workshop I led during our latest in-person event. In this workshop, I’ll be teaching you how to face adversity and make your dreams your reality.

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Podcast production for this episode was provided by CCST.

Episode Transcript:

Erika: Hello friends. Welcome to this week’s episode of Ch*ngona Revolution podcast. In today’s episode, I am going to take you through a workshop that I created for my clients at the Courage Driven Latina event. I felt like it was a very important topic. That’s very timely. So I wanted to share it on the podcast as well.

My clients. I have definitely enjoyed this topic and I figured that it would be just like really helpful to share it with you because we are, we’re halfway through the year, right? And like, it’s really easy to reflect back on the goals that we’ve set for ourselves at the beginning of the year and either decide that we are going to continue to pursue them, that we are going to adjust them.

Or that we’re going to just give up on them and I don’t want you to give up. And that is why I wanted to share the workshop in the, I’m going to start that piece again. And that is why I wanted to share the workshop on the podcast. So the workshop title is the courage to face adversity. And here’s what I want to say about this. It is so easy to stay motivated. when you are just starting or when things are going your way, right? It’s so easy to just want to keep going. And I think people have this, this conception or this idea that all they need to do is just start, right? Maybe you’ve been really procrastinating on something that you want to do.

Maybe you know that you want to make a change in your life and you’re not sure exactly how You’re going to get there, but you’re like, once I start, I’m going to be good. And maybe you have a goal of starting a podcast. 

 So if you’re one of my clients, think about your courage project. If you are not one of my clients and you’re not sure what a courage project is, just think about a goal that you’ve set for yourself at the beginning of the year. So it’s so easy to, Convince ourselves, Oh, I just need to get started.

Right? Like maybe you want to start a social media page, like an Instagram page or a Tik Tok page to teach people financial literacy. You’re like, I just need to start the page or maybe you want to start a business and you’re convincing yourself, Oh, I just need to start the LLC or I just need to go get the certification.

And then like, and then I’m going to be able to do it. Or maybe if you’ve had this goal of getting back in the dating game, maybe you’re telling yourself, okay, I just need to download the app. And then like, and then I’m good. And while getting started is really important, it’s even more important to keep going because it’s so easy to convince yourself.

Yep. I just have to do, I’ve just, I just have to start. Right. I can’t tell you how many times I hear that. I just have to start. You do have to start. But you also have to keep going and it’s so easy to keep going whenever everything is going your way. But what happens when you start, take the brave action, put yourself out there, and you do not get the desired results?

I’m going to give you a few examples from my life, as well as a few examples from my clients. So I had a couple of clients actually, maybe like four clients who all knew that their main platform was LinkedIn. They wanted to start showing up on LinkedIn, but because their former coworkers were on LinkedIn and they were all connected, there was a lot of vulnerability around showing up on LinkedIn.

Well, we did a lot of coaching. All of them ended up posting on LinkedIn. One of them was looking for clients. Um, actually a few of them were looking, actually all of them were looking for clients and whenever they posted, they were like, Oh my gosh, I did it. And then. One particular client that I’m thinking of added a call to action, like an invitation for somebody to work with her within the LinkedIn post.

And the next call we had, she was like, I finally did it. I finally showed up on LinkedIn, but nobody booked a call with me. And I don’t know if I should do this anymore. I think I’m just going to go do something else. I’m just going to like go a different way. I don’t know if I can do this. And I was like, okay, wait, how many times did you post?

And she was like, once. And, of course, me being a coach and trying to be compassionate, I tried my best not to, not to laugh, but on my side, I’m like, okay, girl, you posted one, one time, and you expected a bunch of people to come to you, and this is what we expect as a society now, because we have so many people.

technology. We have a microwave that can heat up our coffee in 30 seconds or a minute once it’s gotten cold, right? We have air fryers that can make things so quickly for us. We have Google at our fingertips. As a society, we’ve gotten so used to this instant gratification. We think that the moment that we take one action, we have the expectation that we are entitled to receiving the immediate results.

And I just want you to know that your goals in your life are not Amazon. Okay, you can’t prime deliver your goals. It’s going to take work, but you are freaking capable. And anytime we hit blocks It is an opportunity for growth. Okay. So that’s one example from, from one client. I had another client who had gone, actually, she had gone through a pretty traumatic breakup.

So there was a lot of just confidence building that we worked on. And her main goal was to get back on the dating game, back in the dating scene. So this client thought, okay, I just have to get started. I just have to download the apps and then everything’s going to be good. Well, of course, She downloads the apps and then ends up just having some, I mean, dating is just very hard nowadays, right?

But having some not so pleasant experiences with people that she connected with and ended up getting ghosted by a few. And of course, by the end of her first week on the apps, like, she’s like, I just need to delete the apps. 

And I’m not saying apps is the way to go meet someone, but the point that I’m making here is that she took the brave action. She did not get the desired result and then she wanted to give up. So are you seeing this common theme? And I’m going to share from my life as well because this has happened so many times for me.

Actually, in just a few launches ago for both Magnetic Mastermind and Courage Driven Latina, I did not get the results that I expected and I could have easily just been like, okay, you know what? People don’t care about these programs anymore, so I’m just gonna shut them down. And those of you listening who’ve been, like, maybe on the wait list for Courage Driven Latina, can you believe if I actually went to go shut down Courage Driven Latina, or the 50 people who are in the program right now, what reaction they would have if I decided, okay, you know what, I’m just gonna, like, cancel it.

Well, What ended up happening with one of my launches is that I did not get the amount of people that I wanted initially and within the first week. And I was like, okay, I have two choices here. I can celebrate the people that I did get and, and walk away, or I can really look at what is this teaching me, what opportunity is here for me.

And what I ended up doing was looking at, okay. This is what the program is for. Here’s who the ideal client is. I actually have clients in my programs right now who fit this ideal persona. And I ended up reaching out to clients who were existing clients and I was like, Hey, like I actually think this program is a really good fit for you.

And guess what? Every single person that I reached out to said, yes. And this is very different than if you were in my how to be magnetic webinar, right, where I’m like saying not to pitch yourself. This is very different than a cold pitch. This is an invitation from somebody who’s already working with me and me as their coach, seeing an opportunity for them.

to pursue what their further goal is, because I know what it is. And we already have a working relationship. And every single person I reached out to said, Oh my gosh, I was thinking about joining. Thank you for reaching out to me because I wasn’t sure if I qualify for this. And I ended up pretty much making my goal.

But the important thing here is that I didn’t make it mean anything about me. I leverage this challenge and these obstacles as an opportunity to be creative, as an opportunity to do something different. And that’s how I want you all to view the challenges you face. It does not matter what your goal is, right?

If your goal, like I just finished a six week kickboxing challenge at my gym. And the goal was to lose anywhere between two to 3 percent body fat, which is actually a lot to lose. And it required so much discipline on my end. And I remember speaking to my partner because you get a partner and she was really struggling with staying motivated because there wasn’t the immediate results.

But guess what? She stuck with it. It the accountability helped, right? We held each other accountable. I didn’t want to let her down. She didn’t want to let me down. Yeah. And not only did she lose the body fat percentage, we ended up being one of the top people. So like us as a pair ended up, I don’t know what position we got.

I don’t know if we got like first, second or third, but what I do know, because the trainer told me you’re in the top percentile. We were one of the leading people in the challenge. And it’s because when we found ourselves not getting the immediate results, we still stuck through it. And we were And we went to the coaches and we were like, okay, what, what can we do?

Because I remember the first day that I weighed in, I was at like, uh, 19 percent body fat. And then the next day or like two days later, I went back and then, or I went to LA, something happened. I was like traveling. And then I came back and, oh, I went to DC. That’s what I did. And I was like trying to not eat bad.

So I was just skipping meals instead of, eating clean and eating well. I was just skipping meals and I lost weight, but I gained body fat. And the whole challenge was about losing body fat. So I went up almost an entire percent. So I went back, like I, so I made the decision to join this challenge and instead of making progress, I literally went back and that could have been a moment to just give up, right?

It’s so easy to want to give up when things don’t go our way. So a few other examples from clients of mine are, um, like, for example, posting podcast episodes and then you maybe your podcast downloads don’t grow like you expect them to. That’s an example from a client as well. Um, maybe you’ve put yourself out there on the dating scene, just like one of my other clients, and then you were ghosted by guys or women on the dating apps.

Maybe your business revenue is down. This is happening with a lot of my friends right now, even myself. Um, maybe you don’t land the job you prepped for. So I also had a client who was working working really hard to prep for a job interview and then goes to the job interview and ends up not getting the job and they like really took the time to prep for it more than they had any other job and then they ended up not getting the job and the immediate reaction was Maybe I should just stay where I am now, even though this person knew that this job was not where they wanted to be anymore.

It was a toxic work environment and they wanted to leave. Um, the other example that happens a lot is maybe you’re posting consistently, but your page isn’t growing or you’re making offers, but people aren’t booking sales calls like the first example. that I gave you all. And this is when most people will give up because they do expect that overnight success that I was talking about with this like instant gratification.

But let me just share some numbers with you, okay? Half of businesses fail in the first five years. Almost 50 percent of marriages in the United States will end in divorce or separation. 90 percent of podcasts don’t get past episode number three. And the average growth rate for Instagram just last month, according to, I think it was like later.

com, it was 1. 6 percent last month. So why am I sharing these? I’m not sharing these to be a Debbie Downer. I’m sharing these because a lot of times businesses fail because people legit stop trying. Right, and with marriages, of course, if you’re in a toxic situation, like, let it, I don’t think the divorce or separation rate should ever be zero because we should be allowed to leave situations that are unhealthy for us, but a lot of this is because people have chosen to not talk about the things that are coming up, have literally just given up.

And then 90 percent of podcasts don’t get, don’t get past episode three. Like, if you’ve gotten to episode five, you are already in the top 10 percent of podcasts, yet we expect to post five episodes and then have like one of the top ranked podcasts. And that’s just, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment with that.

Know that your goals are going to take work, but know that they are worth pursuing. Okay. So if you’re setting these expectations of like, Oh my gosh, I have to hurry up and grow. Okay. Are you growing at least like 1. 6%? Yeah. Yeah. A lot of us expect to just get to like thousands and thousands and thousands of followers when consistency wins the game.

Y’all, I’ve had this podcast for two years and two months now. I’ve been creating content for years at this point because even before I was a coach I had so many other things that I was creating content on, including when I was a yoga instructor, when I had the food blog.

So while a lot of people think that the goal is to start, the goal is actually to keep going even Especially when you’re not getting your desired results. So the big error that people make is that they are looking at their current reality to confirm that what they want is possible. Let me try to say this in other words because this is, this is like really important.

You are looking at your current life to find evidence that what you want to create is possible. But what you’re, you are wanting to create is a new reality. It doesn’t exist yet. So you’re not going to find the evidence in your current reality. Let me give you a few examples. If you want to be a millionaire, but you’re looking at your bank account and you’re like, yep, there’s not a million dollars there.

So I’m going to wait until I get a million to believe it. Well, then you’re never going to get to a million. You have to believe before you can create. The belief comes before the actual manifestation, even with a partner, right? If you’re like, Oh, look at all my ex boyfriends. They were all just, they treated me bad.

No good guys exist. And I’m never going to end up with one. Well, like if you’re having that belief, you’re going to keep. Attracting more of that into your life. So rather than looking at your current reality to confirm what’s possible, think of what it is that you want to create. And remember, that once you believe it, you’re more likely to step into it.

I’m jumping a little ahead here because at the end I want to talk to you about the power of visualization because that is a big way that I’ve been able to manifest a lot of different things in my life. But the big point that I want to make is that you keep creating more of what you focus on. And if you’re focused on what’s not working, you’re going to create more of what’s not working.

So let me give you an example from just a few of the stories that we talked about. The client who, um, Didn’t get the job that they prepped for they could just be they could go through the job interview, not get the job and say, see, told you, like, I wasn’t even worthy of this job. And then what kind of actions are they going to take from that belief?

Well, they’re not going to go apply to other jobs, or maybe they’re going to apply to lower level jobs that don’t actually challenge them, that feel unfulfilling just because they have focused on, Oh my gosh, see, I told you this wasn’t going to work. And this is what we do so much as humans. Like we have this doubt and then.

I think everybody has a level of doubt in their mind. And then we’re like, Oh, see, told you, see, this didn’t work out. I knew I was right the whole time. And that does not serve us. Like we’re never going to get out of that if we’re constantly telling ourselves that we’re not good enough of receiving something.

And then we’re fighting because we’re going to find evidence of whatever it is that we believe in. And if you’re my client, they just think back to the self coaching model, right? How our thoughts create our results and our thoughts create our reality because our thoughts influence how it is that we feel and how we feel influences how we act and how we act influences our results.

Okay, so you’re probably thinking, well, what the hell am I supposed to do, Erica, if I am taking the brave action, trying, putting myself out there, and then things aren’t working out. I’m facing adversity. And this is currently what’s happening, but yet you don’t want me to focus on that. I know it makes no sense, but here’s the thing.

You can give up like most people do whenever they get to this stage, but you’ve actually already decided against that because you are listening to this podcast. And if you heard my podcast episode a few weeks ago about adversity and how it’s a terrible thing to waste, I am going to talk a little bit more about that because adversity is inevitable.

Challenges are inevitable. Failure is inevitable. You’re going to come across struggles. Nothing is going to go perfectly and you don’t want it to because. Adversity is a terrible thing to waste. If you know you’re going to go through adversity, how, like, what are you going to going to do with it?

When I think about adversity, I think about it as an opportunity to see and do things differently. There’s a book called The Obstacle is the Way by Ryan Holiday and this whole concept of The obstacle becomes the way is so fascinating to me because in 2020 I was teaching yoga and the yoga studio is closed.

And if they wouldn’t have closed, I’d still be teaching yoga today.

That door was closed in my face and I had all the feels about it. I was like, damn, I thought yoga was my thing. I thought I was going to be the Latina yoga instructor. And then when the yoga studio is closed in 2020 and I’m in California, so they were closed for almost a year, I believe. But if that wouldn’t have happened, it wouldn’t have led me to coaching.

But you know what’s so interesting? Yoga led me into mindfulness. I had always really been into self development, but yoga led me into mindfulness. Which then led me to create content more focused on mindfulness, more focused on self development. And then, like, because I wanted to be the Latina yoga instructor, I was like, what if I do kind of woman of color focused self development?

And that’s when my TikTok account blew up. And that’s when people started asking me if I offered coaching. And that is how I am where I am today. If I did not face that adversity, this podcast would not exist. So how can you look at the challenges and the obstacles that you have faced as an opportunity to do things differently?

Right? With my, my launch, or my launch a couple times ago, the people that are in my mastermind now wouldn’t have been in my mastermind. If I didn’t come across that struggle, like if I would have just gotten the amount of applications I was looking for, I would have never reached out to these clients that I knew I could help.

And then I knew I could continue working with, and then I knew this was the next step for, so how can you leverage the obstacles? As a way of doing things differently. And now let me give you just some examples from other people in history. So in the iconic 1997 Nike commercial, a lot of you probably weren’t even born yet, but, um, the Nike commercial was called failure.

Michael Jordan reflects on all the times that he missed crucial shots or lost a game. As he walks to the Chicago Bulls locker room. So he says in the, in the commercial, he says I’ve missed more than 9, 000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games, 26 times. I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed.

I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. Another example is Amazon and we’ll just quickly about Jordan. So Jordan is considered one of the greatest basketball players of all times. I mean, I think we all probably had a pair of his shoes. I know I have many of them. So Amazon, we all know Amazon today, right?

That was so funny. I was just thinking about Amazon earlier today because I was driving in an area that I lived in about a little bit over 10 years ago. And I want to say that at that time, Amazon wasn’t even profitable at that time. Amazon was just known for selling books because I was in community college at that time.

And I remember like trying to buy a book on Amazon. Obviously prime wasn’t a thing then, but I just find it so interesting that Amazon has even evolved and pivoted, right. And they’ve gone through their fair share of obstacles and adversity, but Amazon wasn’t profitable for the first nine years that it was in business.

And now it’s the leader in online shopping. I mean, my mom shops on Amazon. She uses my account, but We try to shop local but sometimes we need to get things rushed 

 So we get so caught up in our ego that we want to stop trying When one thing doesn’t work, we don’t want to fail. We don’t want to look stupid, but if we can just take our ego out of it and ask the question, what is this adversity teaching me?

What is this challenging time teaching me? Then we would go so much further.

Can we replace ego with curiosity? Can we not take adversity personally? And can we use it as a launch pad? You know, I almost want you to think about the slingshot theory, how, or the slingshot analogy, how you have to pull a slingshot back in order to go forward. That is what adversity is for you in your life.

It’s pulling you back to allow you to redirect where you’re going and to give you enough momentum to leap forward, to spring forward.

So bring to your mind, whatever goal it is that you have, or maybe whatever challenge you have faced. And I want you to imagine that you’re That’s slingshot analogy. You’re being pulled back to redirect and gain the momentum to go forward. Of course, you know that I have some tips for you on how to have the courage to face adversity.

So the first thing is take your ego out of it. We were just talking about this. Stop trying to make this personal. I mean, what do you want? Do you want to, um, never fail or do you want to reach your goals? Cause you could, you could never fail. You just have to stay home all day and not ever do anything. I actually don’t even know if that’s possible.

I’m sitting here thinking about it, but if you’re listening to this podcast, you have no desire to live a life like that. Another thing that’s really important that we do inside of Courage Driven Latina, so whenever we have people pick a courage project, so the courage project template is their courage project.

And then at the end of the courage project, we have their bigger why, like why they’re doing it. So for example, create, um, a money coaching business to help women of color create wealth so that we can empower women of color. For example, that would be an example of a courage project.

Notice that at the end, it has like the bigger why to empower women of color, to give them financial literacy, to give them the power of knowing how to make money, knowing how to manage money. There’s a bigger why behind it. Or sometimes people work on a courage project that’s all about confidence building and their courage project is to build more confidence so that their daughter can see them loving themselves, believing in themselves, taking care of themselves.

Thank you And that is inevitably creating generational healing. It’s allowing them to teach their daughter what it is that they’re learning on their own confidence journey. So there’s always a bigger why. So whatever project, whatever goal you have, remember why you started. Because whenever you make it about you and not why you started, you’re going to give up.

Of course you’re going to give up. The other thing is leverage community. Right? I talked about the kickboxing challenge I did and how it was so helpful to have a partner that I didn’t want to let down, a partner that I can reach out to when I needed help, a partner that I could check in on. And the other thing was, I was also leveraging the coaches at the gym.

I was asking about, okay, hey, like I, I thought that I was going to lose body fat this week and look, I, I measured in and now I’m higher. And they were able to look at like, okay, well, how are you eating? How often are you working out? What kind of workouts are you doing? Okay, let’s make these tweaks. And then the next time I weighed in, I was down a body fat percentage.

So leveraging your community. This is your. Colleagues, this is your coaches. This is your therapist, like anybody that you can really lean on. This is why working on a courage project inside of Courage Driven Latina is so powerful because everybody’s working towards something. And y’all, sometimes I will look at Slack and the amount of peer coaching that happens in there and the way that these women help each other.

I’m like, Y’all don’t even need me. Sometimes the clients themselves give better coaching than I do just because, you know, like a lot of brains are better than my one brain. And sometimes people have a connection or have already done something that maybe I haven’t done. So there’s so much power in community.

The next thing is use adversity as an opportunity for growth and creativity. Sometimes we get so boxed in in the way that we want to do things, but adversity is that invitation to look at things differently, look at it from a different perspective, take a step back, how can you do this a little bit different?

How can you think about this a little bit differently?

And the last tip that I have for you is, rather than focusing on what your current reality is, focus on what it is that you’re creating. Focus on what it is that you, the, the ultimate goal. Because. When it comes to imagination and the power of visualization, Your brain does not know the difference between reality and imagination. There was a piano study, I know I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but it’s such a good study that I love sharing it. I want to say it was either Harvard or Stanford, I can’t remember, one of those top schools, but they brought in two groups of people who knew how to play the piano.

And they had one group play the notes of the piano and they measured their brain waves to see. what parts of the brain were activated and at what level. And then they had the second group. They showed them the same notes from the piano, the same music, and they did not have them play on a piano, but they said, Hey, I want you to imagine that you’re playing the notes on the piano.

And they also measured their brainwaves. And what they found was that both groups had the same part of the brain activated to the same extent. If this isn’t making sense to you, like imagine. That you are on stage giving a speech, your brain has these different areas activated. Now imagine that you are sitting there closing your eyes, imagining you’re giving a speech on a stage, your body would be reacting in the same way.

which is so fascinating because that means that we can then create new neural pathways in our brain by just using our imagination. So if you haven’t already experienced the goal that you want to create, like maybe it’s growing a podcast or dating or what, whatever it is, whatever your ultimate goal is, you can start to visualize it and imagine it in your mind.

And that then allows you to become more familiar with that experience, which creates those neural pathways, which lets you. Achieve this goal with less resistance than if you didn’t do that. So 80 percent of athletes, Olympic athletes use visualization. I mean, that tells us something, right? There’s also another example of virtual reality.

Um, I was listening to a Jay Shetty podcast where he was talking about how he was at Facebook or at Metta and he had the virtual reality glasses on. And when he was standing on the cliff, he had the same physical reaction as if he was actually standing on the cliff. So. The power of our imagination, y’all.

It really makes a huge, huge difference. This is one of, like, this is one of the first things we do inside of Courage Driven Latina. We leverage visualization because it completely transformed my life. So,

 if you can create it in your mind, you can also create it in real life. Okay, to quickly summarize the courage to face adversity. We tend to think that we just need to start, but what we actually need to do is we need to keep going even when we are not having the desired results that we want. We need to stop looking at our current reality for confirmation that what we want is possible because we can create a new reality in our imagination and then create it in real life. 

Adversity is going to happen. You’re going to come across challenges, but adversity is a terrible thing to waste. You do not want to waste this. By the way, Adversity is a Terrible Thing to Waste came from a book that I read. I shared this in the podcast a few weeks ago. 

the podcast is called How to Benefit from Challenging Times and the book that refers to this, which is a really good book as well. is called Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Giarda. I probably said that wrong. All right. Yeah, so that’s where adversity is a terrible thing to waste comes from. So remember that the obstacle becomes the way.

Adversity is nothing more than the opportunity to see and do things differently. 

And then we ended with our tips, which is take your ego out of it. Remember why you started. Leverage community. Use adversity as an opportunity for growth and creativity. And then remember to focus on what you’re creating by using visualization instead of what your current reality is.

If you would like my help in having the courage to face adversity and the courage to not only start the project that you want to start, but also keep going, even when things get challenging, we will help you do that. In 90 days inside of Courage Driven Latina, the doors are opening on July 29th. So mark your calendar, be ready because the doors open and they will only be open for about a week.

So the doors are going to close on August 7th. So again, July 29th until August 7th. Inside of Courage Driven Latina, you’re going to work on a courage project. A courage project can be starting a business. It can be Posting on social media. It can be building your confidence. It could be pivoting, right?

Like if you’ve been wanting to make a change in your life, if you’ve been wanting to adopt a new habit That is a perfect courage project. We’ve helped hundreds of women come through Courage Driven Latina who at the beginning weren’t even certain about what they wanted to do and then had a fully executed project in 90 days.

Again, the doors open on July 29th and they’re going to close on August 7th. So be sure to join the wait list. The link for that is down below and I cannot wait to work with you. I’ll see you next week.